• Question: why are we so much more developed than apes?

    Asked by lucyyyy to Charlotte, Jo, Kevin, Louise, Valeria on 12 Jun 2012. This question was also asked by sofoconnor, oliviaaa, gabic.
    • Photo: Kevin Mahon

      Kevin Mahon answered on 12 Jun 2012:

      Excellent question!

      Remember – modern man did not evolve from monkeys and apes. Modern man, monkeys, and apes ALL evolved from a common ape-like ancestor over 20 million years ago, at which time monkeys broke away from us on the evolutionary line.

      Humans and apes had common ancestry until about 5-8 million years ago, which explains why we share so much more of our DNA with apes (96-98%), particularly chimpanzees, than we do with monkeys. At that time, human ancestors split off from the apes.

      So for the last 5-8 million years, humans, monkeys, and apes have evolved seperately, in different environments under natural selection, which explains why monkeys and apes still exist.

      In that sense, monkeys and apes are just as evolved or ‘developed’ as humans, but they are adapted to the environments in which they live. Our most noticeable difference is the fact the our brains got bigger!

    • Photo: Joanna Cruden

      Joanna Cruden answered on 12 Jun 2012:

      It is all about adapting to our environment and the strongest surviving, all species have evolved, some more than others. We are still evolving as a species and so are apes.

    • Photo: Valeria Senigaglia

      Valeria Senigaglia answered on 13 Jun 2012:

      We also moved more than apes.
      We spread all over the world and every time we moved in a different environment we faced new challenge.
      When you face a challenge you need to get inventive to overcome it and so we developed a big brain.

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